That would be virtually impossible on the IoW with the exception of the Military Road! The destruction in houses gardens would be unbelievable.
Like any 'community' there are attractors i.e. places that people need to go. In the main on a daily basis they are clearly shops, places of employment, education and health facilities.
Like many places the Island has its fare share of out of town centres. In the early 1950's (first tranche of rail closures) and 1966 (second tranche) these didn't exist. We didn't have trading estates. In 1966 the obvious trading estates were probably Plessey (one site employer off Three Gates Road near Northwood) and er that's it. Other out of town employers would have been the hospitals St Mary's (mainly between Parkhurst and Newport) and the prisons (Albany, Camp Hill, Parkhurst).
I think the first major out of town site would have been Tesco's in the very early 1980's. I ran a bus service there from the West Wight. I was the first operator to get a road service licence in around 50 years (as a new incumbent) that is how much control Southern Vectis and Seaview Services and Moss Motor Tours had then.
Obviously since the late 70's things have changed. Old rail sites like at Newport, Wroxall, Ventnor, Freshwater have been built on (though Freshwater largely exists if you know where to look.) The biggest one is at Newport where Riverway now carries on to St Mary's obliterating all the rail alignment north out of Newport for a mile or so making it impossible to replicate. South of Newport the M3057(S) aka the 'Coppins Bridge inner relief road' has been built along the alignment south from the Medina rail bridge southern spur (demolished about 1966/7?) as far as Shide. The old Shide station is where National Tyre is. It was the first station site (as opposed to building) to be converted IIRC.
All this means is that you have to look at what you want to achieve.
If that 'achievement/goal' is akin to say Sheffield Supertram then nearly all street running might be appropriate, but once you've speced that out....you might as well have kept the bus?
As I have posted previously there are various retail corridors that people aspire/gravitate towards. I would suggest the main ones are Newport, Westridge (Tesco's) and Ryde. With secondary ones being Cowes, East Cowes, Freshwater, Sandown, Shanklin and Ventnor. You then have the big people aggregators like the College, High Schools, St Mary's, the larger employers and the cross Solent terminals. Connecting these up by a rail based system is the difficulty.
The main environmental advantages of a tram based system would be power (electricity) rather than derv (buses) and relief of traffic congestion. I am not sure of how much of the latter one might achieve. But one thing is true, people are more readily attracted to rail based systems than bus based systems.
In the end of course no tram based network will be built on the Island because there has been and is no vision. It is all cheapskate built on mainland cast offs, always was under the old IoW rail companies, SR, BTC and BR.
But if we are to think of the next 100 years instead of the next 'term of office', think strategically yep you might have a good argument. The road surfaces get worse, the council has less and less money, people live longer, populations grow (even if it's a geriatric one - I'm heading there) and there are more demands put on the system.
